Chicago will hire 111 bypassed black firefighters by March 2012 and pay at least $30 million in damages to some 6,000 others who will never get that chance, under a court order expected to be approved Wednesday by a federal judge.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed that African-American candidates did not wait too long before filing a lawsuit that accused the city of discriminating against them for the way it handled a 1995 firefighter’s entrance exam.

The NAACP filed suit against Fayette County today, alleging that the county’s method of electing members to the County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education violates the federal Voting Rights Act.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and attorney Wayne Kendall filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of the Georgia State Conference NAACP, Fayette County NAACP and black voters of Fayette County.

The American Bar Association has announced that Elaine R. Jones, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), will receive the organization’s 2011 Thurgood Marshall Award Saturday.

The Award, honoring the late Supreme Court Justice and LDF founder, will be given during a gala dinner of the association’s annual conference now underway in Toronto, Canada. It honors a recipient’s “substantial, long-term contributions to the advancement of civil rights, civil liberties and human rights in the United States.”

While some of the gridlock among policymakers today can be chalked up to principled differences in political philosophy, some political stalemates are the result of policies that defy common sense. This most often happens when politicians ignore basic realities in order to further their own ideologies. This behavior is frustrating in any instance but is particularly galling when the needs of kids are involved.